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The Entrepreneur Show 2010
“Whether its a start up or an existing business, you will find all the inspiration you need to do better business all under one roof” is the show theme. The show will host seminars from Entrepreneurs and Panel discussions with a cross section of industry experts and Entrepreneurs. There will also be an array of service providers to help businesses start up or enhance the ones they have. The “Invest Test” area will feature businesses looking for investment, judged by a live panel of industry experts including 5 UK and Irish Dragons Den Investors.
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Innovation Connections Programme Launch
InterTradeIreland launched the Innovation Connections Programme today in the offices of the European Commission. John Fitzgerald, Vice Chairman of ITI and chairman of the National Transport Authority introduced the speakers – Minister Billy Kelleher (Trade and Commerce), Chris Horn (chairman of Engineers Ireland, founder of Iona Technologies and member of the Innovation Task Force), Sadhbh McCarthy (Centre for Irish and European Security), and, of course, myself from INNOVATOR.
The presentations kicked off at, starting with Minister Billy Kelleher. He was very enthusiastic about the whole area of Demand Led Innovation and said that the government will need to really start focusing on helping SMEs to grow their businesses through innovation, which is not all about R&D and Large Enterprises. Chris Horn spoke about current Innovation initiatives in Ireland, including his own work through the innovation task force. He spoke of the importance of innovating for the short term so that SMEs achieve results in 2010 and he acknowledged that Demand Led Innovation was certainly a great way to achieve this.
The launch took the form of an open forum where attendee’s were given the opportunity to ask questions to the panel. It was great to hear such positive feedback about the area of Demand Led Innovation, which is quite a new concept in Ireland (as user-centered design expert, Toby Scott, rightly pointed out). A great introduction to a programme which “innovates innovation” (or so says Aidan Gough, Policy Director– let there be many more!
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Innovation Task Force Submission
Last September, the Innovation Task Force requested submissions of “concrete policy proposals to assist in Irelands transformation to an International Innovation Hub” and “any relevant information which would be of assistance”. 108 people agreed to have their submissions published online. I’ve uploaded Innovators submission and am waiting to see the Task Force’s Final report which is due to be pulished early 2010.
INNOVATOR-Innovation Task Force Submission
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Practical Workshop on Demand Led Innovation to Generate Revenue
This practical two day workshop using design thinking principles will guide you on looking at your company and markets in new ways and show you exercises on how to transform your business, allowing you to generate new revenue models for existing and new markets.
What you and your colleagues will get from this workshop:
* Bring new innovation practices into your business
* Create sustainable business models for generating new revenue
* Rapidly amend existing offerings to tap into new markets
* Take skills learned to easily prototype and create new products and offerings
Using the massively expanding travel security market as an example (though these principles work for all industries) we’ll see how marketing companies, training companies, web service developers, lighting manufacturers and dozens more company types can all bring their products and services into this market.
InterTradeIreland have commissioned industry experts, INNOVATOR and Centre for Irish & European Security, to design and run this workshop.
The workshop will be most relevant to SMEs from all business sectors whose focus is:
Short to medium new business opportunities
Delivering services, products and processes which meet real customer needs
For this programme, the tarket market was the Civil Security Sector. This sector is valued at €26bn in Europe alone and is growing at 5% per annum. Having only scratched the surface, we have uncovered 15 new business opportunities, all of which have been validated as “unmet needs” by lead customers. These opportunities, along with key insights will be presented by civil security experts.
INNOVATOR and the Centre for Irish & European Security are available to provide expert mentoring & support to interested companies, throughout and on completion of the programme. More info on Innovator website.